“Facts and figures and all the rational things that we think are important ... don’t stick in our minds at all ... stories create “sticky” memories by attaching emotions to things that happen. ... Here’s how to use storytelling to your benefit." Actually pretty basic and theoretical - looking at examples is better - but the key principles here …

"Canadian researchers have confirmed what most people suspected all along: that internet trolls are archetypal Machiavellian sadists.... via Heather-Anne MacLean's post: https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140730175026-5723090-don-t-feed-the-trolls-research-reveals-psychopathy - Online trolls are psychopaths and sadists, psychologists …

A beautiful, HTML5 exploration of the HEART methodology: Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task Success. " different members of your team have different ideas about the goals of your project. This process provides an opportunity to build consensus about where you're headed." - How to Choose the Right UX Metrics for Your Product

"The original converted 7.6% better than the new variation... The leads from the long form version of the page were better in quality ... in most cases long form copy doesn't just boost your conversions, but it also increases your rankings too." Indepth and (inevitably) long analysis. Huge feedback. - How Content Length Affects Rankings and…

"Readers want short, snappy content, ideally under 140 characters or at most a list, right? Well, actually, wrong.... 7 recent studies: long form content is alive, thriving and driving high levels of content performance." Full article summarises 7 more, so I won't summarise it here - read it yourself: - Improve Your Content Marketing with Long …

Great case study of how shallow A/B testing can send you in the wrong direction: "...there are a few things to watch out for. The first is statistical significance ... Another is the common mistake of assigning a goal that measures the short-term effect of a test rather than the long-term effect on your business. We made this mistake at Segment.i…

Sometimes long form content helps with conversions, and sometimes it hurts, and sometimes, long form content is better for SEO, but other times it’s worse" Read the full article to understand why ... and how, and when. Key point: " the best long form content marketing doesn’t make one feel like they’re being marketed to...." - Why Long Form Cont…

"a new media startup aims to bring the ProPublica approach abroad, creating Germany’s first nonprofit investigative news organization... completely focused on data journalism... The team intends to compile and share large datasets that map people in power to the money behind them, collaborating with local open data organizations as well as other n…

"... outside communications such as Gchatting and texting while you work don't count as multitasking. Every time e-mail comes in, every time a text messages goes in, a little time goes ... People think they can work and be productive in the face of all those interruptions. This work suggests that they can’t.”" - Interruptions at Work Make You Way…

"there is a hierarchy of information consumers are looking for.... consumers seem much less concerned with how they receive it than with whether the content itself is well conceived, well executed, useful and honest." - Survey: What Types of Content Consumers Do Want From Brands | FleishmanHillard

Altimiter study finds that while 80% of companeis surveyed said they were "undergoing digital transformation": "... only 25% had actually mapped out the digital customer journey. It’s unfortunate that so much time and resources are going toward programs that may or may not hit the mark." That's a lot of money being wasted. "While the word “digi…

Brown Moses made his name crowdsourcing information in conflict zones, such as analysing weapons in Syria ... from his front room in Leicester, England... using social media, open source tools, and public information to verify details that news organizations can miss. Today, he's launching a site to pool his and others knowledge together in one…

"Two of the biggest trends in news today: the rise of mobile and the rise of data visualization. The unfortunate reality is that they’re often in conflict. ... If you want to do better, check out MobileVis ... Ros also pulls out a set of best practices for doing visualizations for mobile. Data visualization is good. Data visualization that works …

You've probably seen "articles that seamlessly transition to new content, without requiring readers to click or tap headlines and then wait for new pages to load." Time seems to be using it to bait-and-switch - bring in users using social-optimised content, and then present the 'serious' news that they 'should' be reading: "World news typically …

"The Post's new online vertical, Storyline, will cover policy topics through articles, videos and charts -- or "chapters" -- that follow a particular storyline.... avoid "hypothetical policy debates" ... We are going to tell stories with people, with characters, with human drama, in a way that other policy sites don't do very often... depar…

"Could “all you need to know” be the most insidious, reductive, and lame story formula currently conquering our reading life? Everywhere you turn there’s another purported ne plus ultra explainer purporting to tell us “absolutely everything we could possibly need to know” about some current event, some curiosity of history, some deep mystery of li…

"Any time something as complex as SEO is painted in such broad strokes – which many blogs do in order to appeal to a larger audience – there are going to be things left out. And unfortunately for many marketers trying to improve their search rankings, they’re often very important things." Good guide. Particularly like: "Your first priority shoul…

"the Orange is the New Black-inspired content series on women inmates in America cracked the top 10 most read articles on the site, with fifty percent of its traffic coming from social media and 60 percent from mobile. ... time spent ... rivaled time spent with the top New York Times editorial. “ - New York Times adman gushes over native advertis…

" the 4 key layers of a big data system - i.e. the different stages the data itself has to pass through on its journey from raw statistic or snippet of unstructured data (for example, social media post) to actionable insight. The whole point of a big data strategy is to develop a system which moves data along this path. In this post, I will attem…

Apart from 3 good videos to watch, a good example of content curation... "We have all heard (ad nauseam) about the “power of brand storytelling,” and I know that I have read more than one blog that spits off a numeric list of tips that I just “can’t live without” as a content marketer..." - 3 TED Talks That Uncover the Secrets of Storytelling | …

"those that know how to tell the stories of their work are heard (and subsequently funded) while those who are poor at storytelling are often forgotten and neglected" - Quantum Computing And The Value Of Storytelling In Science - ReadWrite - Station Q, Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/stories/stationq/index.html

"Creating a beautiful presentation requires a symphony of visual elements to work together for a “big picture.” Designers seek to make the entire vision work together in terms of how each part interacts. This includes layout, typography, and imagery, which all add up to a cohesive set of design elements. So, how can you orchestrate the chaos of de…

What does Wierd Al Yankovic have to teach the EU about communications? Watch the video and agree: “Everything, basically”.

How to Spot Liars at Work and How to Deal with Them 45 minutes of psychology, body language, etc. Really insightful into the blind spots we all have, the biases we suffer from which make us distrust honest people with the ‘wrong’ eyebrows or chin, and which make us trust people we shouldn’t on the basis of looks, group membership, vested interest,…

Key "takeaways" (gag), of which the last is hilarious: "- Two-thirds of readers have felt deceived upon realizing that an article or video was sponsored by a brand. - 54 percent of readers don’t trust sponsored content. - 59 percent of readers believe a news site loses credibility if it runs articles sponsored by a brand. - As education level …

"As media companies seek out new ways to make money, is a crisis of trust brewing?"

IAB/Edelman study on in-feed sponsored content: "The potential success of sponsored content is directly linked to how consumers already feel about the brand advertiser and the publisher hosting the content.... [Brands must] Create value for audiences ... publishers should ... be willing to walk away from advertisers who aren’t relevant/trusted" …

"I’ve long said that if you have to put a link next to a label saying “what’s this?” then the label clearly isn’t clear enough. ... when I see a link to Forbes on Twitter, I don’t know whether it is going to take me to (1) the good work of a Forbes journalists, (2) the good work of a Forbes contributor, (3) the bad work of one of many Forbes cont…

"...there are computational techniques that will reveal all kinds of information about you that you're not aware that you're sharing... "Project Gaydar... were able to infer people's sexual orientation by completely ignoring anything that the person had actually said and instead looked at the person's friends ... even if you're a person who want…

"The absolute worst thing that can happen as a result of this furore is that (a) Facebook keep any and all data they collect private, and run these sorts of studies behind closed doors, and (b) scientists wouldn’t want to touch their data anyway, for fear of public outrage. This would be disastrous, because social media hosts a wealth of informati…